With Scottish Friendly you benefit from over 150 years of experience. Today we continue to work hard to maintain the standards that have served our members well over the years - good value products and quality service.

Scottish Friendly forges ahead with record sales in 2013

Scottish Friendly, Scotland’s largest financial mutual, has today, Monday 27 January, announced record sales figures of £20m for 2013.

The financial services group reported a 135% rise, from £8.5m in 2012 to £20m in 2013, in like-for-like sales of core life, pensions and protection products (based on the industry standard of regular premiums plus one tenth of single premiums).

The strong growth figures illustrate the mutual’s expertise and the high demand for its extensive product offering. The figures are notable as they were achieved within a challenging economic climate and a depressed market for financial products.

Scottish Friendly’s sales and marketing director, Neil Lovatt, said:

These figures paint a remarkable picture of growth for the Scottish Friendly group, reflecting our investment in innovation and the benefits of our three-part growth strategy.

Growth has largely been achieved through our new lines of protection business distributed by partners, and is also attributable to the success of our new ISA products.

The My ISA range was introduced in late 2012 and has grown significantly over the past 12 months. It has quickly become our principal savings and investment contract in terms of new business and has helped contribute to an increase of over 50 per cent in e-business in 2013. Our different approach to ISAs has really opened up investment ISAs to everyone, not just the wealthy and well-advised, and has been a major success with families in the UK.

Our approach, consisting of ‘simple savings for everyone’ and the creation of new life insurance partnerships, has lifted Scottish Friendly to a new record sales level and we expect further developments in 2014.

Significant partnership deals completed during 2013 enabled Scottish Friendly to expand operations, including distribution into the Irish financial services market with the distributor Hello. These partnerships mark the continued diversification of Scottish Friendly’s product and service range and further establish the mutual as a significant operator offering innovative product solutions to financial services organisations and consumers alike.